


like waking from a dream

by yellingsounds



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universes, Book/Movie Crossover, Deadlights (IT), Depression, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, F/M, Fix-It, M/M, Post-Canon, Stanley Uris Lives, The Turtle CAN Help Us (IT), but it doesn't stick, he just needs some persuading, loser's club: into the clownverse, they're still dead
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:01:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28252821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yellingsounds/pseuds/yellingsounds
Summary: Eddie seems to be flickering, replaced by a stranger and a child and then Eddie again, only eleven this time, plaster cast tucked against his chest; Eddie again, only the cast is a makeshift splint and his other arm isn’t there at all. Eddie as he died. Eddie alive. Eddie again, Eddie again, Eddie again....Bill tries to bring his friends back. Somewhere else, someone else has the same idea. There's only one Turtle.This complicates things.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	like waking from a dream

**Author's Note:**

> I've seen a lot of fix-it fics that involve The Turtle resurrecting Eddie (and sometimes Stan). Sometimes there's a price, but The Turtle always seems to know what he's doing.
> 
> And I love those fics! They're great! But honestly?
> 
> I don't think The Turtle is competent enough not to screw things up a little.

2016

Bill spends a lot of his time staring at blank pages.

It was worse, staring at a computer screen in an empty trailer, trying to rewrite something he didn’t want to lose. Now it’s just an issue of remembering, sitting here on his kitchen floor, staring at the lines of his notebook until they start to blur.

It’s a funny thing, remembering.

Bill’s memory is not to be trusted, not anymore, but still he trusts it. Still he holds on tight to the sand that threatens to slip between his fingers, cups the flooding waters in his hands and screams  _ this means something. _

It’s unreliable. Inconsistent. Vulnerable, manipulated by a town line and a few choice words, but it means something.

**_macroverse_ **

It means something. 

He’s squinting at the word when the phone starts ringing. It’s Mike, which means Bill doesn’t want to answer it. 

Not that he doesn’t want to talk to Mike--of course he does. He just doesn’t want to talk about his divorce with Mike. With anyone, really.

**_the other_ **

But especially Mike.

**_what can be done when you’re eleven can never be done again_ **

Besides, he has more important things to do.

**_what can be done when you’re thirty-eight can never be done again, fucker_ **

Bill declines the call.

Then immediately feels guilty and calls back. 

Mike picks up on the first ring. “Hey, Bill,” he says. “Just wanted to see how things are going.”

Bill is beginning to think Mike’s habit of “keeping tabs on them” didn’t end when he left Derry.

He is beginning to think this because two days after “Richie Tozier Cancels All Future Shows,” Mike sent Bill a text asking him to  _ please check on Richie. He’s not answering my calls.  _

Because the headline “Audra Phillips announces divorce” went live less than twenty-four hours ago.

Mike still keeps tabs on them, learns information they won’t tell him through headlines and twitter hashtags. It’s invasive, sure. But Mike has been the lighthouse keeper for two decades, he deserves to be a little invasive. 

Still. Bill doesn’t want to talk about his divorce.

“Things are great,” he says. “How’s F...florida?”

“Better than I imagined,” says Mike, but there’s something in his voice Bill can’t place. “Nothing like Maine.”

“Was th-that the only requirement?”

“Pretty much.”

“See any alligators?”

Mike laughs. “Not yet. How’s the book coming?”

Bill looks over his paper. “Oh, you know.”  **_you got stabbed, you can’t be sorry_ ** “Been writing a lot.”

“Yeah? Going well, then?”

Going somewhere. 

“Yeah,” he lies. “Going really well.”

“Bill,” Mike starts, and maybe Bill isn’t as good a liar as he thought. “You know you can talk to me, if--”

He can’t do this anymore. “I-I know you s...saw the news, Mike.”

There’s a pause, then:

“Yeah.”

“I’m fine.” He’s not fine. “It was am-amicable.” Sort of. 

“Okay.” Mike doesn’t sound convinced.

“Th-things were going south long before you c-called,” Bill says. “We had talked about f-filing before Derry, actually.” 

It’s true. They were going to try to work it out until Bill came back from a trip to his hometown an entirely different person, but Mike doesn’t need to know that. 

“I’m sorry, Bill.”

“D-don’t be. It’s for the best.” 

“I just--” a shrill, piercing sound cuts Mike off, made even more grating by the phone speaker.

“Is that a s-s-smoke alarm?”

There’s a rustling noise, then a crash.

“I think I broke it.”

“Are you okay? Is th-there a f-fire?”

“No, no fire,” says Mike. “But they’ve been going off all day. I’m sorry, I’d better call the landlord, but if you want--”

“I-I-I told you, I’m f-fine,” Bill says. “G-go.”

He hangs up and turns back to his notebook. 

**_macroverse_ **

**_the other_ **

**_what can be done when you’re eleven can never be done again_ **

**_what can be done when you’re thirty-eight can never be done again, fucker_ **

**_you got stabbed, you can’t be sorry_ **

Satisfied, he rips the page out, grabs a thumbtack, and walks into the living room.

The walls are covered in notebook pages, sticky-notes, even napkins--he uses whatever he can get his hands on, when he wakes up. The writing is scribbled, frantic, in some places, neat and idling in others. To his right, a collection of papers plastered over each other, marker overlapping, form the image of a giant, cosmic turtle. To his left, he has printed and displayed a one-way ticket to Derry, Maine, leaving tomorrow. 

He isn’t fine.

But he will be.

  
  


Someone’s knocking at his door. 

Bill considers the state of the living room. He can just pretend he’s not home. 

The knocking gets louder.

He can’t cover this all in time. They’ll give up eventually.

The doorbell starts ringing.

They won’t, not if it’s who he thinks it is.

He tacks the new page over the plane ticket, spins on his heel, and walks through the kitchen to open the door.

“Hey,” Richie says, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his dirty sweatshirt. “Mike asked me to come by, check on you.” 

Bill moves aside to let him in. 

“Mike needs to m...mind his buh-business.”

“Did you know he has an alert for my name on twitter? Bev snitched.” Richie rolls his eyes, leaning against the marble kitchen island. “I know he’s worried but it’s still fucking creepy.”

Richie’s hair sticks to his forehead, caked down by grease and sweat. He’s disheveled, which isn’t exactly unusual. But his eyes don’t look quite right.

He looks like shit. Bill tells him so. 

“Right back ‘atcha, Big Bill,” Richie laughs hollowly. “You look like you haven’t slept in a week.”

He hasn’t, not in any way that counts. 

“You don’t need to ch-ch-check on me,” Bill says instead. “I’m fine.”

He angles himself so that his body blocks the entrance to the living room, where he left the door ajar. Stupid.

“So am I,” says Richie, looking at him suspiciously, “But that doesn’t stop my manager from blowing up my phone every day. Man, you have one public breakdown and cancel your tour, and suddenly everyone--”

He stops and examines the room.

“Hey, didn’t you have stools in here?”

What?

“You-you’ve never been to my house.”

“I looked it up on Zillow,” Richie explains, like that’s normal. “You have anywhere I can sit? My back is killing me.”

His eyes light up. “It’s ‘cause I was up last night with your--”

“I’ll go get you a ch-ch-chair,” Bill interrupts, “J-Just--s-stay there.”

He tries to shield Richie’s view by shuffling himself backwards through the door to the living room. He thinks he’s doing pretty well, until Richie says:

“Are you hiding something, Bill?” 

“N-no,” Bill says, and slams the door shut. 

Footsteps move closer. Richie’s voice is right outside the door.

“You’ve been squirrely ever since I got here.” 

“I’m juh-just getting you a ch-chair,” Bill says. The doorknob twists under his hand. He grips it tighter and pushes against the door with his shoulder. 

The door pushes back.

“This is not how you get a chair,” Richie says. “This is how you hide a body. Or a pound of coke. Or a mistress.” 

Bill’s shoulder is starting to hurt.

“S-speaking f...from experience, Rich?” 

Richie lets go of the door suddenly. It swings open, sending Bill to the floor.

Asshole.

Richie steps over him neatly. “I mean, we did do one of those things in Derry.” 

He looks around the room once, then down to Bill, then back to the room. 

“What the fuck?”

“D-don’t l-look at th-that,” Bill says helplessly, scrambling up. He picks up one of the stools resting against the wall. “Here. A s...stool.”

Richie ignores him. “Have you been sleeping in here?” he asks, poking at the blanket on the couch.

“Not really,” Bill says, because he hasn’t been sleeping, not really. 

“Is this for a book?” Richie asks, and stops to look at the back wall. “Is this, like method-writing? Is that a thing?”

“Yes,” Bill says.

Richie narrows his eyes.

Bill puts down the stool. “N-no.”

“Shit, Bill!” Richie says, shaking his head. “I would expect this kind of thing from Mike, but you?” He examines the wall, picking at a stray piece of scotch tape. “Actually, Mike’s conspiracy board was a lot neater.”

That’s debatable.

Richie untacks one of the papers and peers at Bill’s handwriting. “What does this one even say?” 

He shouldn’t tell him.

He really shouldn’t tell him.

“‘The Turtle really is d...dead,’” Bill tells him, pointing, “‘I cheated on my wife,’ and th-th-that’s a drawing of th-the Turtle's scale.”

“You cheated on your wife?”

Well.

He did kiss Bev that one time.

But--

“That’s not--that’s not what that means.”

“Then what does it mean?” Richie’s starting to look worried. “Did you take something? Is that what this is? Are you on--”

“I’m not on d-drugs, Richie!” Bill interrupts, “I juh-just…”

He’s silent for a moment, trying to figure out a reasonable explanation, before realizing there isn’t one.

“I’ve been having these dreams.” 

  
  


The dreams started two days before Audra finished moving her stuff out of the house. He didn’t tell her about them, just like he didn’t tell her about Derry. 

Just like he didn’t tell her about a lot of things. 

He wonders, sometimes, if honesty would have changed things. About what would have happened if he came home three months ago and told her exactly what had just happened in his hometown and exactly what had happened there twenty-seven years before. She wouldn’t have believed him, but what if she did?

What if she believed him and so it explained things and so it fixed everything? 

He didn’t tell her, though, and he grieved silently and spent “too much time in his head” and she worried and they fought and had meetings with lawyers and divided up assets and so when the dreams started, he didn’t tell her about those either.

And she left. And the dreams continued. And the dreams continue.

He sees Silver, but it’s not Silver, not quite: the handlebars are curved the wrong way, the colors a bit off. 

He hears voices he doesn’t recognize saying words he does. He hears voices he does recognize saying words he doesn’t. 

He sees It--It as the werewolf, It as the clown, It as the spider. It as Georgie. It as other fears, playing parts he hasn’t seen before, but he knows it’s It. The voice is the same. The eyes are the same. 

There’s a pen on his bedside table. There was a notebook there, too, until he filled it up, and another after that. He keeps them around the house, now--in drawers and cabinets and stacked on the floor, ready for the remnants that come back to him throughout the day. 

Bill sees some things and hears some things over and over until they’re burned into his brain, until he doesn’t need to write them down as soon as he wakes up--they will still be there an hour, a day, a week later. He can sketch the turtle as slowly and carefully as he needs to.

Some things are so fleeting he writes them directly on the wall. 

  
  


“ _ Dreams?” _

Richie is sitting on the arm of Bill’s couch, right under the drawing of the turtle, legs stretched out across the cushions. His shoes are still on.

“Dreams,” he repeats. “I have dreams.” 

Okay.

“I have nightmares about the fucking clown,” Richie says. He’s got the blanket all bunched up in his fist, knuckles turning white. “Weird shit happens. That’s what a dream is.” 

“Th-these aren’t r-regular dreams, Richie,” Bill insists, splaying his hand over one of the papers. “Th-they’re messages.”

Richie stares at him. “I think you need a psych eval.”

Wouldn’t that be something. ‘Hey doc, I just fought a shapeshifting alien for the second time, my wife left me, and now I’m hearing voices in my sleep. But it’s fine, right?’

“I’m s...serious,” says Bill.

“So am I.” Richie loosens his grip on the blanket. “I think the greywater gave you some sort of parasite. A brain worm or something.”

Bill doesn’t respond.

“You know how this looks, right?”

Yeah. He does.

But Bill can fix things. He can feel it. 

“Batshit. It would look batshit,” Richie says, reaching his arm behind his head and tapping the turtle’s eye, “to someone else.”

Meaning: someone other. Someone who didn’t fight a giant space clown.

“I think you’re having nightmares.” 

“Richie--”

“I think you’re having nightmares,” Richie repeats, “and I think you’re remembering stuff, shit you didn’t remember before. I think you’re fucked up, just like the rest of us, and you’re looking for things that aren’t there.”

Bill tries to see the situation from the outside. Tries to imagine walking through the door and seeing himself with shadows under his eyes and in desperate need of a haircut, seeing his living room crowded with all the furniture in the house and wallpapered with nonsense he heard in his sleep. Seeing the blanket on the couch and the drawings on the floor, putting the pieces together. He’s newly divorced, newly retraumatised. He’s tired and angry but he’s not grieving, not yet, not anymore. 

Yeah, maybe Richie’s right to be concerned, if that’s what he sees.

But when Bill looks at Richie, what does he see? 

“I th-thought you’d believe me,” he says, quietly. 

Something similar, in all the worst ways. 

“If I do, then what? The clown’s back?” 

Something like a mirror, but the surface splinters.

“It’s d-dead. We killed It.”

The reflection is warped.

“Who’s sending the messages, then?”

Richie is broken in a way that Bill isn’t. He thinks it’s over.

“I don’t know,” Bill tells him honestly. “S-s-something good. Not It.” 

Richie laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “‘Something good,’” he repeats, then trails off, staring at something over Bill’s shoulder.

“Wait,” he says, launching himself off the couch. The blanket falls to the floor. Richie shoves past Bill to get to one of the papers on the wall.

He takes his glasses off, wipes them on his sweatshirt, then puts them back on. Bill cranes his neck to see the page, but Richie rips it off the wall before he can. 

“Wait, you--you heard this? In a dream?” he asks, with an unusual seriousness. “‘Hey bitch, you’re never too old to rock and roll?’ You heard that?” 

Bill nods. Richie grabs him by the shoulders and looks him dead in the eyes.

“Could you see him? The man saying this, could you see him?”

Bill nods again. 

“Describe him, that man. Tell me what he looked like.” 

“You-you’re kinda f-f-freaking me out, m-man,” Bill says, because he is. “I-I-I don’t r-remember. He had glasses, I th-think.”

“ _ I’m  _ freaking  _ you  _ out?” Richie gestures to the wall. “You have your dream journal plastered all over your wall, you look like you haven’t showered in a week, and now you’re telling me…” 

“Wuh-what, Richie?”

“Could you hear It? Talking to that man?” 

Yes, he could. Richie’s really freaking him out now.

“It was s-screaming,” Bill whispers. “It wanted him to l...let It g-go.”

Richie takes his hands off of Bill’s shoulders, rolls his eyes toward the ceiling, and lets out a quiet string of expletives. 

“Big Bill,” he says sadly, “You’re not on drugs.”

Bill stares at him. “Y-yeah, Rich. I know.”

Richie looks at him for a moment, fear plain on his face. 

“That’s what I saw in the deadlights.”


End file.
